Does the moon love him? Looking for him every night, she marked his hair silver so she would know him wherever he went, fox or hare, in the fields or a pub, in Dublin streets at the hour my mother calls "bad time".

Nearly nine years ago, someone else told me that I was his one true love. And then one day he said he loved me but he wasn't in love with me. Finally he said he was in love with someone else; that was, for me, the event horizon for a relationship that was already killing me in little and big ways.

Now I see the fox or hare, dashing through my fields in the bad time. He turns his face to the moon, and the moon wants to remain cool and remote in the sky, but she feels a yearning to be close to the fox or hare, to feel her light in his fur, between his paws. And she is afraid, for she sees hunters and cars where once they were just objects. But the fox or hare is brave, he must be brave, to be a fox or hare in these fields, on these streets, among the hunters and cars.